


The High Road

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Guilt, Mary's inner reasoning, Post-Episode: s12e03 The Foundry, episode coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:50:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8439190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: Mary has her reasons.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a tiny thing that might be a look at what Mary was thinking when she walked out the door.

'I have to go.'

She wasn't blind. She could see the damage she was doing, adding to what was already there. This man—her son—was already so broken, only a few more taps against the right fault line was going to fracture him irreparably. But she had no choice.

She looked at Sam. He had the same damage, the same shadows lurking deep beneath the boyish charm he was trying so hard to surface coat himself with whenever she was in the room. 

'I'm sorry.' She turned back to Dean. 'I'm so sorry. I just need a little time.'

It's what the hunt was supposed to be. Time. Time away. Time to collect herself and her thoughts and try and figure out what kind of world she was living in. Maybe even time to escape, to run, so that this moment didn't have to happen. She could have disappeared. She hadn't forgotten how. She might have sent a letter, or just let them think she was gone for good. They'd have looked, mourned, then gone on and eventually forgotten this little warped-time hiccup in their lives with only a little more scar tissue to show for it, because she didn't belong here. 

The Angel might have said so, but it was only out of a willingness to make it so for these men who claimed to be her sons— _were_ her sons. She had no doubt when she looked into their faces who they were. There was too much of John in them, too much of herself, to deny that these grown men were her blood, her babies. But that was just it. To them she was the mother they had lost, frozen in their memories and plucked from that moment to be restored here and now. To her, they were strangers, men raised in a life she had shunned and fought to escape and yet, had ultimately set them on the path toward in her moment of weakness those years ago with John dead in her arms. One more reason she couldn't stay.

She couldn't see her little boy in this wrecked man in front of her, whose gaze slid down and away as he stepped out of her radius, snubbing her touch, but it broke her heart nonetheless. Sam was more receptive, eager to take whatever she could afford to give, and maybe that was his youth, some salvaged naiveté his brother no longer possessed. At least they could connect on the level of being misfits, splintered  into places and at times they did not fit quite right.

'I love you,' she said earnestly, and she found she wanted him to believe it even if she couldn't mean it with her whole being, not yet. He held her close and she felt his breath hitch in his chest, dragged herself away before she found she was unable. She turned. Dean still would not look at her. 'I love you both.'

She hadn't wanted this. She hadn't wanted to destroy herself in front of them, to destroy the fairytale perfect memory they held of her, but she couldn't play the part. 

She paused long enough to put a hand to Sam's arm. A reassurance to one or both of them that she would be back. She would. She hoped. She had to go out there and find herself now, though. Because she wasn't a Hunter—or she didn't _want_ to be—and she wasn't a mother, not here, not now. 

Not to these men. 

 


End file.
